GNU Make vs Jenkins comparison

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GNU Make

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GNU Make and Jenkins compete in automation and build management. Jenkins has an advantage with its extensive plugin ecosystem and CI/CD capabilities.

Features: GNU Make is known for handling dependency graphs and rules efficiently. It supports static pattern rules for source compilation and integrates with third-party dependency builders. Jenkins features an extensive set of plugins, offers advanced CI/CD functionalities, and integrates with various tools, enhancing its extensibility.

Room for Improvement: GNU Make could enhance its GUI and modernize its declarative syntax to support advanced automation needs. Jenkins requires improvements in initial configuration complexity and its extensive reliance on plugins can make troubleshooting time-consuming. Better native support features could streamline workflows.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GNU Make is easy to install, requiring minimal configuration and providing a lightweight solution. Jenkins demands more setup effort, but benefits from comprehensive documentation and community support, offering scalable orchestration suitable for large projects.

Pricing and ROI: Both GNU Make and Jenkins are open source without direct setup costs. GNU Make provides a reliable ROI for simple builds. Jenkins offers scalability and automation efficiencies, which justify potential higher initial investments in configuration and maintenance.

To learn more, read our detailed GNU Make vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: February 2026).

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GNU Make vs. Jenkins

February 2026

Helped 881,707 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

GNU Make

Ranking in Build Automation

16th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Jenkins

Ranking in Build Automation

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.2%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Jenkins	7.2%
GNU Make	1.7%
Other	91.1%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Josh Call

Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Enhances productivity with efficient dependency handling and a straightforward setup

GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for tasks like compiling C++ code. In the industry, AI developers, for example, use GNU Make in their work…

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Jamshaid I

Principal Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Efficient resource allocation and robust workflow with autoscaling capabilities

In Kubernetes, we use node-based architecture with nodes and pods and follow practices like RBAC and rollback. Multiple pods can run concurrently. We benefit from Kubernetes' ability to autoscale pods and use horizontal pod autoscalers to adjust the number of pods based on metrics like CPU or memory usage, ensuring efficient resource allocation and stability under load.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Setup is extremely straightforward."

"Makefiles are extremely easy to work with using any preferred editor. GNU Make can be run directly from the terminal, not requiring any time wasted on clicking."

"Full-featured syntax allows building strategies as simple or as complex as one wishes, and declarative approach fits the task really well. Wide adoption also means that everybody knows what GNU Make is and how to use it."

"GNU Make is such an essential tool that it is almost impossible to imagine working without it. Not having it, developers would probably have to resort to doing everything manually or via shell scripts."

"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."

"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."

"Jenkins has built good plugins and has a good security platform."

"Jenkins is a very mature product."

"We used it for all continuous integration parts, like automation testing, deployment, etc."

"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."

"With Jenkins, the pipeline will take your code from any versioning system like GitHub or Bitbucket. All the security scans can happen in one go and then all the tests also get run. You can just build one container in it and deploy it."

"The simplicity of Jenkins and the evolving ecosystem of Jenkins are most valuable. Today, you do not have to write a pipeline from scratch. The library functionality of Jenkins helps you to bring all those in ready-made, and you also get the best practices for them. That is a great feature of Jenkins, and that is why it is being used significantly."

"We are using the open-source version and there is a lot of plugins and features that are available and it works on agents for free. In other solutions, it will cost extra to use them with the agent."

"It is easy to use."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"GNU Make requires using the Tab symbol as the first symbol of command line for execution. In some text editors this can be problematic, as they automatically insert spaces instead of tabs."

"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output. A wrapper named colormake exists to work around this, but native (opt-in) support would be welcome."

"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."

"The bug fix speed is very slow."

"Jenkins is an old product, and we encounter performance issues and slow response. Also, some of the plugins are not stable."

"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."

"The product should provide more visualization as to how many pipelines are performing and how many builds are happening. It should also integrate with Kubernetes and OpenShift."

"Some kind of SaaS product would be helpful in providing organizational structure."

"Partition security for the workflow of projects is not yet an option."

"Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management. This needs improvement."

"Jenkins could improve by adding the ability to edit test automation and make time planning better because it is difficult. It should be easier to do."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GNU Make is free and open source software."

"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."

"Jenkins is an open-source platform."

"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."

"The solution is open source."

"The tool is open-source."

"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."

"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."

"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user184734

Systems Administrator at Facebook

Jan 22, 2015

I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.

Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GNU Make?

GNU Make is a free solution that comes with Linux, which positively impacts operational costs by eliminating licensing fees.

What needs improvement with GNU Make?

I am not familiar enough with it to suggest any specific new features or areas for improvement. It occupies its niche well.

What is your primary use case for GNU Make?

How does Tekton compare with Jenkins?

When you are evaluating tools for automating your own GitOps-based CI/CD workflow, it is important to keep your requirements and use cases in mind. Tekton deployment is complex and it is not very e...

What do you like most about Jenkins?

Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jenkins?

Jenkins is used in many companies to save money, especially within R&D divisions, by avoiding the expenses of proprietary tools.

More GNU Make Competitors

Comparisons

TeamCity vs GNU Make

Compared 18% of the time

CloudBees vs GNU Make

Compared 15% of the time

Bazel vs GNU Make

Compared 14% of the time

Tekton vs GNU Make

Compared 12% of the time

LaunchDarkly vs GNU Make

Compared 12% of the time

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 12% of the time

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

CircleCI vs Jenkins

Compared 3% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

Download GNU Make product report

Build Automation

January 2026

Download Jenkins product report

January 2026

Overview

Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.

GNU

Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox